


Cut and Run

by Crait



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Kate Bishop, Emotional Constipation, F/F, Families of Choice, Future Fic, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crait/pseuds/Crait
Summary: Clint Barton: matchmaker?





	Cut and Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liebchen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liebchen/gifts).



Clint was getting too old for this stuff. For one thing, he was in his forties now; ideas that had seemed amazing in his twenties and probably okay in his thirties now looked like oncoming trainwrecks. For another, one of his shoulders was all futzed up. There were parts of it that were only held together by what was definitely alien technology, even if the people involved in the repairs refused to confirm or deny anything on that front. He could still shoot; he was still in a physical condition that looked effortless but required a lot of actual work; he just sometimes looked over the ledge before he leapt from it.

And he even if he'd seen this coming, he hadn't expected America Chavez to be the instigator.

"It's been five or six years," he said. "Don't you think we should make it a nice, even ten?"

She was sitting on his cooler while he grilled, having literally dropped out of the sky and onto his rooftop not ten minutes before. Lucky, who now occasionally behaved with the dignity befitting his gray muzzle, abandoned all etiquette and greeted her with the enthusiasm of a puppy.

"No, Barton, I don't think we should make it a nice, even ten," she said. "That's why I'm here. We've got a chance to make it right."

He almost pointed at her with his spatula and then thought better of it. This was his fourth spatula. He'd borrowed it from a downstairs neighbor and accidentally-on-purpose forgotten to return it. He didn't know what had happend to the third one. The second had been lost somewhere around the time he'd moved to Brooklyn, and the first was presumably still in Bobbi's custody. She was on a six-month vacation to a resort island in the Caribbean, or else he'd have asked to borrow that one back. Anyway, America was unpredictable; wave a spatula in her face and tomorrow you'd be borrowing spatula number five from the guy upstairs.

"Not that the cause isn't noble," he settled for saying, "but you've never been what I would exactly call the least vocal critic of the Avengers—"

"Back up," she said. "I've _been_ an Avenger for half my life now, Birdman. I may not agree with what the leaders do, but I've always respected the team."

"Leaders meaning Stark and Rogers?"

America shrugged. That was something titanic about her shoulders that reminded Clint of nobody so much as Cap. "Tony and Steve, they're good men. They want to do what's right."

"Yeah, whatever that means," said Clint, who thought he was doing a good job of believably conducting this conversation in the style of someone who wasn't ride-or-die for the Avengers. "Did you talk to them about it?"

"You mean, did I get permission?" Now she just looked amused. "Yeah, I talked to them. To Jan, too. I told them I wanted to make something new out of the bones of the old. Tony offered funding. Jan offered funding and new costumes. Steve... he was a little harder to convince."

"Cap?" said Clint. "Hardheaded? No!"

"Ha ha," she said. "He came around."

"I bet he did." He'd seen Steve and America go at it exactly once, and even though it was rare to see Steve lose an argument, she'd put him on the ropes and kept him there. "Who do you have in mind?"

"Not sure yet," she said. Clint flipped his burgers. "Ms. Marvel, maybe. Spider-Man."

"Sure you aren't just relocating the Champions?"

"Nah, they got their own problems. But the two of them as part-time members, I want that. Blue Marvel, maybe, at least as an advisor."

"Oh yeah, gotta have the brain trust," he said. "Ironheart?"

"She's got a lot going on now. Shellshock, on the other hand—"

"Lila Rhodes?"

"She'll say yes," America said, with the kind of confidence that came with the ability to punch holes in dimensions. "Wiccan, if he isn't too busy with his mami learning how to be a junior sorcerer supreme. Doctor Fantastic. She-Hulk. Maybe Nat or Carol."

"Did you talk to any of 'em yet?"

"No," said America. "Just you."

"Me? Seriously?" Clint had to look down at the grill and give the burgers another unnecessary flip to absorb that information. When it remained un-absorbed, he took a drink of his beer. The beer was disgusting, but at least it was cheap.

"Seriously?" he tried again. "Me?"

"The Avengers need a Hawkeye," said America. "And you need a team."

Here was the thing. He and America weren't what you would call _close_. They worked together just fine, and he liked her because Clint had never met a woman with steel in her spine that he didn't like, and they had gotten to know each other in the way two moons that orbited around the same planet might get to know each other— _in passing_ —but they'd never really struck up a friendship. And that was okay, but now it brought up a lot of questions. Well, okay, maybe only one question, but he wasn't going to ask America about she-who-must-not-be-named—

"Did you try Katie?" his mouth said. Shit!

"No."

"Okay," Clint said. "Cool." Except— "Maybe you should."

"No," America said again. He had a feeling she wasn't willing to repeat herself a third time. "She made her choice. I respect that, but we don't _talk."_

"Okay, cool," Clint said, because he had no problem repeating himself. "Cool. That's cool. Right now the team is apparently just you and me, which is less cool, although on a weighted scale we're at least as capable as my first line-up—me, Wanda, Pietro, and Cap," he added, after noticing that America's eyebrows had climbed her forehead. "Man, those were the days. We were young and dumb, but we made the most of it."

"Are you gonna be like this all the time?" asked America. 

"What, a fountain of nostalgia for the good old days?" said Clint. "Absolutely I am. I'm the token old guy, it's my duty."

America swore in Spanish. Clint wouldn't have followed even if he had been looking directly at her lips, but the connotation was pretty clear.

Something occurred to him. "Hey," he said. "Do you have digs for us yet?"

"A headquarters?" America said. "Hold on to your dentures, Barton. You'll like this."

-

She was right.

"So when Tony offered funding," he said, "he also offered you... this?"

They were standing in front of the mansion on Fifth Avenue. Lucky was peeing on the lawn; portal travel apparently didn't cause his insides to crawl into a knot the way Clint's did.

"Yep," said America. "No strings. It needs some work." She shrugged. "He said to talk to Lila about that. She controls a lot of his assets."

"I knew he was grooming her to take over S.I., but I didn't realize he was already transferring ownership," Clint said. "For a while there I thought she'd follow her uncle into the Marines."

Saying that the mansion needed work was like saying a circus had three rings; it was so obvious that you probably didn't need to waste your breath. The landscaping was in okay shape, although garden around the side looked like it aspired to be Sherwood Forest, but as far as Clint could tell, nobody had even bothered to open the front door in years.

"Wonder when Tony got it back," he said. "Didn't Johnny Storm own the title for a while?"

"No idea," America said. "It's ours now. You in?"

Clint watched Lucky amble off to investigate the tall perimeter fence. "Yeah," he said. "I mean, no."

"What?" 

"I'll join the team on a temporary basis," he heard himself say, "but I'm not moving in."

"Why not?"

"I don't know." Lucky stopped to eat a stick. "It's, uh... I'm good where I am, you know? The building, they need me there. And I may be the token old guy, but I'm not going to be the token old guy who tries to recreate an experience he had twenty years ago. And anyway, you're going to need that room for someone else."

"Are you kidding me," America said, flat. "There's a hundred rooms in there, we could house the entire Utopian Parallel."

"No."

"You're serious."

"Uh, no thanks?" Clint tried.

It worked, sort of. "Fine," America said. "Whatever. As long as you don't expect me to pick your ass up every time I need a sharpshooter."

"I'll take the subway," Clint said. In retrospect, that was maybe where he should have tried to negotiate.

-

Kate had taken over Alias Investigations a few years ago after Jessica Jones had walked. She hadn't taken up alcoholism alongside it, but she did spent a little too much time working and a little not enough time sleeping. By that point she could out-shoot Clint and out-investigate SHIELD, so he wasn't sure why she was living in a shitty walk-up that wasn't even in the same building as her office, especially when she spent most of her time at work.

"Didn't Jessica sleep here, too? I swear there's a bedroom."

Katie-Kate was scowling at her computer while she idly scratched Lucky's head. "Clint," she said, "with all due respect, can you shut up for a minute, I need to concentrate." She had some kind of bluesy-rock music playing in the background. A woman with a gritty voice was singing:

_Hey there, lady,_   
_You can cut and run,_   
_But we both know_   
_That your troubles ain't done._

"Oh, sure," Clint said. "Just ignore me, I'm only here to visit the plant." Kate had a cactus growing in a pot on her bookshelf. They'd put it on the top shelf so Lucky wouldn't try to eat it, although he was usually too smart to try eating a cactus. Better safe than sorry, though. You leave one cactus on the coffee table and the next thing you know you're on the emergency line to your vet while you try to pull a spine out of your dog's snout with the tweezers you use for fletchery. Anyway, nobody was stupid enough to eat a cactus twice, right?

"Ugh," Katie said, and then she flopped back in her chair like she was still a spineless twenty-year-old and ground her fists into her eye sockets. "Fine. You win. I know you aren't really hear to visit Pokey."

"No wonder you're a private dick."

"Do you ever wonder if we're unhealthily codependent?" Kate said out loud, like it was a normal thing to say. "You're basically standing in for my entire family, you know that, right?"

Every part of Clint cried out in terror. "Uh."

"Oh my god, Barton, stop scrambling for an exit strategy. I'm just saying, maybe we should give up on dating, adopt another dog, and move in together. Like—what are the twins who live on the third floor—"

"Rhonda and Rory—"

"Right, Rhonda and Rory. We can start a knitting circle."

"I date!"

"When was the last time you went on a date?"

"You don't know that I _don't_ date."

"Yes, I do," Kate said, because she was an obnoxious little know-it-all and Clint would happily tell her that to her face. 

Clint slouched his way over to a couch that Kate assured him was boho eclectic and not curbside odoriferous. "Pot, kettle," he said. "You're gonna have to face her eventually, Katie."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, you do. She's hurt. She doesn't get why you shut her out."

"That's her problem," Kate said. Clint lifted his head from the back of the couch long enough to stare at her, and she looked away, ashamed. 

"You don't mean that."

She sighed. "I don't mean that. It was the right thing to do, though."

"You almost sound like you believe that bullcrap."

"What we were doing wasn't healthy for me, okay? And that's selfish, I get it, but I couldn't keep hanging around and using her as an emotional substitute for what I really wanted."

"I still don't get how you were using her as a substitute for what you really wanted when she was what you really wanted."

"I already told you," Kate said. "I'm not explaining it again."

"Because it doesn't make sense?"

"Can we stop talking about America?" Kate demanded. 

"That's gonna be hard," Clint said, "since I'm rejoining the Avengers and she's leading the team."

Kate stared at him. She stared some more. She finally stared so long that Clint heaved himself off the couch (wow, his knee did not like that) and waved a hand in front of her eyes.

"Earth to Katie," he said. "Kate? Bishop!"

"The Avengers split up like ten years ago," she responded automatically, although she was still wearing that glassy expression. "And don't call me Katie."

"It was more like five or six years," Clint said. "I don't think anyone ever meant for it to be permanent, you know? But most of the people who could've pulled things together were busy with their own stuff"—like going to therapy—"and I don't think any of us have gotten old enough to start thinking about legacies in anything other than a 'I've died six times, someone else might as well use my cool name and color scheme' way."

"Clint," Kate said solemnly. "If I die, I want you to use my cool name and color scheme."

"Sure. Do I get your shitty office, too?" Although in all fairness, the office was shitty because Kate a. didn't want to live where she worked (for once—maturity?) and b. after finally inheriting a chunk of her dad's change had decided to implement a sliding scale for her rates, which meant if you wandered into her office looking sad enough, she'd probably help you out for free. 

"No, Jessica gets my shitty office, just in case she ever decides to climb back into the ring," said Kate. "Or in case Danielle wants it. She could turn it back into a residential apartment, I guess. I thought about doing that when I bought the unit." She shut off her computer and waved away the display. Lucky, sensing some of the cues that preceded a walk, started to wag his tail. It was like watching a rock rolling downhill: the first few wags were tentative, but then he really started to pick up speed, and now he looked like he was trying to use his tail as a propeller to fly butt-first to the park. God, Clint loved dogs.

"You done for the day? I have part of a leftover pizza."

"Yes," said Kate. "Please. Also I left my best net arrow over at your place."

"Did you? I don't think you did," Clint said, because Kate's best net arrow was better than his best net arrow by a lot.

-

They went back to Clint's apartment and ordered new pizza, because half of a leftover pizza wasn't nearly enough to feed two hungry Hawkeyes and their hungry Hawkdog. Clint put on some reruns of _Dog Cops_ , which later turned into the second half of _Die Hard 2_ and finally drifted over to _Saturday Night Live._

"Do you think Pete Davidson's ever going to leave this show?"

"God, I hope not," said Kate, who was watching 'Weekend Update' and shoveling popcorn into her mouth with the coordination of a real pro. "Are you still doing that thing for SHIELD next week?"

"Yeah," Clint said. "If, you know." He took the plunge. "Team stuff doesn't get in the way."

"Team stuff, huh," said Kate. "You already have team stuff."

Play it subtle, he told himself. "Billy's joining." Smooth.

"Good for him."

"And Jenn," he noted, very casually. "Maybe Patsy."

"Uh-huh," said Kate.

"We're front-loaded on heavy-hitters," he remarked, in the same way you might remark on the Mets' post-season performance.

Kate grunted. A minute passed. SNL went to commercial. And...

She took the bait. "Do you guys have a scientist?"

"THREE," Clint said. Maybe that was a little too excited. "Adam Brashear, Lila Rhodes, and, get this, we have Doctor Fantastic."

"Isn't she like twelve?"

"She's in her twenties," Clint said. 

"I swear she was like twelve the last time I saw her."

"She lives in Latveria most of the time," said Clint. "Which isn't such a big deal when you and your dad are the foremost experts on teleportation. Reed and Sue are going to pop their buttons when they find out. She's the first of their kids to join the Avengers."

"There hasn't been an Avengers to join," Kate pointed out. She still hadn't looked away from the TV, but Kate Bishop had been arguing about Avengers lineups since Thor and Iron Man had first locked eyes over Captain America's frozen body.

"It's a good lineup, that's all I'm saying," said Clint.

"Clint."

"But you know what would make it even better—"

"CLINT." 

"There's a spot with your name on it, Katie. All I'm saying."

"Don't call me Katie. And no, Clint, there isn't. I'm not joining. Anyway, America obviously doesn't want me there."

Clint was not suited for this position. "Uh, yes she does, she's just too chicken to ask."

Kate scoffed. "America? Chicken?" She jabbed the neck of her open beer bottle at Clint's chest. "You're talking out of your ass, Clint."

As much as Clint wanted to crawl out the window right then, one of the rules of being a Hawkeye was that you didn't flinch. (It was more of a principle of marksmanship, about not anticipating the moment of release and prematurely overcorrecting, but it worked pretty well as a general life rule, too.)

"Look," he said. "Kate. You can't avoid her forever."

"Watch me."

"And you need a team."

"Maybe _you_ need a team," said Kate. "Is that what this is about? Giving up on the solo stuff?" 'Solo' meant 'Team Hawkeye,' because there was possibly a blurring of boundaries between their identities that would have made an outside party uncomfortable. Whatever. Katie was family, which was why Clint was willing to douse his instincts and try to actually have a talk. 

"No," he said. "Maybe. I don't know. Kate, listen—you know I'm not going to be around forever, right?"

Her eyes went wide. "Please tell me this isn't your way of informing me you have a terminal disease."

"What? No, I mean, I'm probably going to want to retire one day—"

"No you aren't," said Kate.

"Okay, maybe not." The slower pace he'd set in the past few years was probably as close as he'd ever get until his body gave out on him, and hopefully he'd be dead by then. Part-time landlord plus part-time hero felt like full-time retirement. "But you need other people."

"I have other people." 

Okay, that was a fair argument. New tactic. "If you don't tell America, I will," Clint blurted.

"WHAT."

Oh shit. Drop it or _commit._ "Yeah," Clint bluffed. "You heard me. She's my team leader now—"

"I'm your PARTNER."

"And I think she deserves to know why you shut her out without any explanation."

Kate's eyes went steely, like she was measuring the distance between her fist and his skull. "If you do that," she said, "I'm calling Bobbi."

"Bobbi's on vacation this year."

"And her vacation info is stuck to the front of your fridge with a Hollywood magnet," Kate said.

"That's some other Bobbi," Clint bluffed.

"Okay, sure," said Kate, but they both knew that what she really meant was: _Try me._

-

Which meant Clint was now left to decide whether he wanted to carry through on the threat or move to L.A. with his dog and stop taking Kate Bishop's calls. Since that strategy had never been sustainable in the long-term, he put off the decision. Mornings were spent making Avengers Mansion habitable, rebuilding the team's old contacts, and trying to remember how to fly a Quinjet so he didn't look like a chump in front of the new guys. (It took a while to pull a team together. The press never got that.) Evenings were spent with Katie busting a German clock-smuggling ring. 

It wasn't until he caught America running around in the bottom half of a new costume and a t-shirt that he realized he didn't have a lot of time left. It was the boots that gave it away. "Hey," he said. "America. Got a minute?"

She looked up from what seemed like a very long and complicated government document (Clint shuddered), registered his presence, and said, "Yeah, just a minute."

The boots though—seriously. Although they kind of worked on her, in the same way they'd kind of worked on the last guy. You had to be dashing to carry the look. Clint thought he had definitely pulled it off, although there was also something to be said for not wearing purple pirate boots as a grown man.

The operations suite was just about finished. America was working at one of the desks to the side of the main briefing area, which was now more or less her office. They had a full holographic display in the middle of the room, a handful of monitoring stations off to one side, and a couch, because nobody wanted to stand through a three-hour lecture on Kree-Shi'ar relations. America had music on while she worked. The song sounded familiar, like maybe it was about selling your soul to the devil or taking too many drugs or getting your heart broken.

"Done," America said. 

"Getting up to speed for the big press conference?" 

"Something like that," said America. "What do you have for me?" She actually sounded a little—kind of, almost, maybe if you squinted— _fond_. Or at least not actively alienating, which was almost the same thing.

What Clint meant to say was: "Not that I make a habit of blackmailing my best friend, but she has F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S directed at you, and you should probably do something about that." What Clint actually said was: "I thought you didn't like me."

"Excuse me?" One of America's nails, which wasn't painted but which somehow gave the impression of a perfect and very bright red manicure anyway, tapped against the desktop. Just once. Once was all she needed to punctuate her incredulity.

"Uh," Clint said, and then he tried to remind himself that he was at least a decade older than America, although when you factored in things like 'multi-dimensional travel' and 'Utopian Parallel' and 'godlike powers,' well, who knew how old she really was? She had the confidence of a thousand-year-old. "I just thought... you know," he explained.

"What?"

"You know."

"No, Barton, I don't."

"At first I figured I was just a placeholder for Katie," he said. "You know—"

"You keep saying that."

"The second choice Hawkeye? And now it almost seems like you like me, but I always thought that you strongly disapproved of my existence. Call it a gut instinct. You didn't have to ask me. I mean, there are easier ways to get to Kate."

"I am not trying to get to Kate."

"Sure, okay, let's ignore that for the moment. I still gotta wonder... why me? Why pick someone you don't even like for your big, shining, heroic moment?"

America, who never looked stunned, seemed like she had almost worked up to surprise. "It wasn't you I didn't like," she finally managed to say. 

"Oh," said Clint.

"It was your relationship with Kate," she said. "Don't give me that look, Barton. You had to know how it seemed from the outside, chico, she was this young girl who looked up to you and you, you're an older guy with a history of problems with women—"

"WHOA," Clint said. "WHOA. It is NOT LIKE THAT."

"Yeah, I know." America rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "It's obvious now. But you're still a mess, Barton. She started cutting herself off, not calling the guys she liked, talking about how the superhero thing was all she needed, and I thought I finally had her straightened out until she cut me out of her life."

"I did not encourage that," Clint said. "In fact, I have actively encouraged the opposite. Which I realize is maybe a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do situation, but I did pick up something from all those employer-mandated therapy sessions."

"I finally figured that out," said America. "She made her own decision. And you... you've done a good job being there for her. So yeah, maybe I did ask you to join the team because of her, but it's not that I don't like you. You get shit done, Barton. I respect that."

"Oh well okay then," Clint said. "Do, uh... do we hug it out now?"

"No," America said. Good to know that the surliness was still in there somewhere under the rah-rah-go-team veneer.

"Great. So I'll just..."

"Yeah," America said. "Wait. I got a question or two for you about the announcement."

"Maybe later," Clint suggested. His body seemed to be instinctively backing out of the room.

"Yes," America said. "Later. Great. See you."

"BYE," Clint said at a totally normal volume, and then, because he was an Avenger and an athlete and had excellent body awareness, he definitely did not trip over nothing on his way out. That kept him occupied for most of the ride home, at least until it occurred to him that having an emotionally constipated leader might actually work in his favor. It wasn't until later that night, when he was out with Lucky on their evening walk, that he realized he hadn't accomplished his goal of revealing all of Kate's darkest secrets, or at least one of the shadier ones.

-

He couldn't trick them into a closet together, either. Kate could pick a lock, and America was about as containable as a wildfire. 

-

What actually happened was that America dropped by his apartment while he and Kate were watching _Die Hard 3_ on a Tuesday morning. Traditionally, Tuesday morning was maybe not a time associated with movie marathons, but between then they had scraped together a pancake breakfast and a meal like that deserved better entertainment than half an hour of dead-eyed staring over the crossword puzzle. Actually, Clint had completely forgotten that he told America she could call or drop by or whatever if she wanted to go over the press conference stuff one more time. He still wasn't sure why she thought he was the go-to guy for public relations, but her reasoning probably existed at the intersection of 'experienced Avenger' and 'knows how to manage a circus.'

"It's a great idea," Kate was saying. "We just have to figure out how to fit a paint pack on the end of an arrow."

"Better idea." Clint jammed a finger in his ear to get at an itch, dislodged his hearing aid, and wiggled it back into place. "You shoot the guy, and if he gets away, you find and detain the one who's bleeding."

"Paint's more obvious," said Kate. "People don't always gush blood when you shoot them with arrows."

"Maybe you're doing it wrong," Clint argued. 

"What if you don't want to hurt the guy, though? Boom. Paint arrow."

"What about some kind of skin dye," Clint said, or was about to say, because that was when a glowing star-shaped portal appeared in his kitchen. Beside him, Kate froze. In front of him, America, who was now in his apartment, also froze.

"Uh," Clint said.

America, who was too cool to look dumbstruck for long, was the first to collect herself. "Princess," she said.

This was it, Clint realized. This was the opportune moment.

"America!" he said. "Hey! Remember how I had something to tell you? Great, me too, because Katie here—"

"Don't call me Katie," Katie said.

"Katie here is embarrassingly—"

"I'm in love with you," Katie said.

"Yeah," Clint added. "That."

"You're shitting me," said America. "You cut and run on me because you're—"

"Yes," Kate said. "I mean no. I mean does anybody hear those police sirens?" She climbed over the back of the couch and pulled her quiver over her head. She was obviously about six seconds away from diving out the window despite her bare feet and sweatpants, so Clint tackled her.

"Ugh, Clint!" she yelled. "Get off me!"

"No!" he yelled back. "Stay here and talk about your feelings!" Or something like that, anyway. Parts of it were muffled by a mouthful of hair, but the general sentiment was there.

"Make me," Kate hissed, and then she kneed him in the neck. Hawkeyes were made of sterner stuff than that, though. Clint got her in an armbar, but she did something with her toes and almost broke his hold. He barely managed to keep her down long enough for Lucky to wander over and sit on her.

The upshot was that they both immediately went limp, because you never caught Lucky in the crossfire. "Give up, Bishop," Clint said. "We've got you surrounded."

Kate groaned. 

"What was that?"

"FINE," Kate said.

"Cool," said Clint, and then he climbed to his feet and hoped he looked at least semi-graceful in the process, even though his back was screaming. Lucky wagged his tail and licked Kate's face, which did nothing to her scowl except make it soggy. America, meanwhile, had her arms crossed. Her expression was completely unreadable.

"I'm just gonna go for a walk," Clint said. 

"I think that's a good idea," said America.

"Great," Clint said, and he patted his thigh. Lucky got up and allowed Clint to clip a leash to his collar. "We'll probably be a while," he added. He looked at Kate. "Hawkeye, good luck."

"I hate you, Hawkeye," Kate said, and then she made a gesture that was pretty rude by American standards. Clint flipped it back at her as he exited. At least this time he didn't trip over his own feet.

There were about ten seconds where he thought about sticking around to eavesdrop, but then he decided he was already seven hundred percent more involved in this situation than he wanted to be, so he followed Lucky down the stairs and outside to his favorite tree. While Lucky peed, Clint called Bobbi. She complained about how much they watered down the drinks at the open bar, and he talked about the price of landlord insurance.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT

His neighbors threw a cookout to celebrate the new team. (That they were technically his tenants had done nothing to increase the level of respect he got, but lemonade and burgers were better than respect.) Aimee even made knishes, although Rhonda and Rory both talked in loud voices about how their grandmother's knishes had been better than any knish ever made, including the four knishes they had collectively consumed in the past hour. Someone brought out an old TV and rigged a series of extension cords to power it. They were tuned in to the game at first, but after the Mets had their asses handed to them, the nightly news came on.

 _"And if you didn't see the live coverage earlier today,"_ said the news anchor, _"we have a clip here of the press conference."_ They cut to footage of America standing at a podium, with nearly a dozen heroes arrayed attentively behind her. She was bracketed on either side by Hawkeyes.

 _"Which is why I'm here to announce that the Avengers are back,"_ America said. _"We're a new team, and we're here to serve you. Any questions?_

_"Jessica Jones with Front Line. Why now?"_

_"It's overdue,"_ America said. _"Instead of waiting for a threat to bring the team back together, I brought the team together first. Yeah, in the front row."_

_"Thank you, Captain. Just a quick one—the Avengers have always been a closely-knit team. Are you carrying on that tradition?"_

Onscreen, America smirked. _"You could say that,"_ she answered, and then she grabbed Katie around the waist, dipped her, and planted one on her in front of a global audience. When they came up for air, they were both flushed and beaming.

"Hey," Clint told Lucky, "I did that."

Lucky whined.

"Fine. _We_ did that," Clint corrected, but Lucky whined again. It took him a minute, but eventually he figured out that Lucky wanted a hotdog, not shared credit. 

Deke turned the TV off and started up some music. "Yo, Barton," he called. "This is your party. There's a lawn chair here with your name on it."

"Yeah, Clint," Tanvi said, and then Tito added, "Unless you're too busy watching yourself, Hawkguy."

"It's HawkEYE, Tito, I keep telling you," said Clint, but he was laughing. Part-time hero, part-time landlord; it wasn't a bad gig.

On the radio, a woman was crooning in a voice like gravel. It was the kind of song that had been sung a hundred different ways by a thousand different people. The melody stuck in your head, but the words didn't. Clint was still humming it a week later as he piloted a Quinjet headed for Madripoor and crewed only by Hawkeye, her new girlfriend, and absolutely no additional backup; but that was a whole other story.


End file.
